


Wake Up, Dear Prince

by sparxwrites



Series: Astroize's Medieval AU [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, Blood, Gen, M/M, Magic, Resurrection, Sparring, Swords & Fencing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-12
Updated: 2012-12-12
Packaged: 2017-11-20 23:55:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/591123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparxwrites/pseuds/sparxwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Castiel’s… well, <i>brutal</i> isn’t exactly the right word. Brutal implies anger, rage, and Castiel certainly isn’t that." In which there are sparring bouts, and Castiel cheats (but that's nothing new), and Dean bleeds for it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wake Up, Dear Prince

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Artwork](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/14364) by Astroize. 



> Inspired by the gorgeous work of art by Astroize that's linked to above. A little strange and a little disturbing, but that's my favourite type of writing.

Castiel’s… well,  _brutal_  isn’t exactly the right word. Brutal implies anger, rage, and Castiel certainly isn’t that. He’s too calm, too collected and graceful and almost amused to be furious. He blocks Dean’s blows effortlessly, as if they’re a mild irritation. Certainly not as if the blows are powerful enough to knock most people back, or as if several feet of highly sharpened steel hadn’t just grazed inches from his body.

Not that that stops Dean from fighting back, with all his skill and strength, but it makes their sparring matches incredibly frustrating. The lack of reaction spurs Dean on, makes him hit harder, faster, create increasingly intricate attack patterns and put his whole weight behind the blows. He suspects that’s why Castiel does it; the angel certainly has a twisted sense of amusement when it comes to anything involving Dean.

The fact that Castiel has magic – and uses it, on whim, despite it being against the rules of the sparring matches – is also incredibly frustrating. Especially when he uses it to simply vanish, which Dean is  _sure_  has no possible value with regards to training him.

“Castiel?” he calls, trying to make his voice sound snappish, rather than uncertain and a little bit nervous. “That’s against the rules, you know, you can’t just dis-”

He breaks off with a sharp, choking noise as the point of the blade slides into his back, pushing through skin and muscle as if it were nothing. The angle’s perfect, slicing through his lung and piercing his heart in one blow before the steel begins to emerge from the front of his chest, gleaming beneath the blood.

Dimly, through the shock and pain – although really, this isn’t so much of a shock, not any more – Dean manages to bring his hand up, push the blade under his arm and through Castiel’s shoulder, feeling the wet slip of flesh giving beneath the pressure, but it doesn’t stop the angel. He presses forwards, until the blade is through Dean up to the hilt, until he’s close enough to rest his chin on Dean’s shoulder and wrap a hand gently around Dean’s throat; whether the action is a subtle threat, or a mockery of a lover’s caress, though, is impossible to tell.

“Oops,” murmurs Castiel in Dean’s ear, a lazy smile on his face at the wide, shocked eyes, the way the human’s gasping for breath he can’t quite find. As if he doesn’t have Dean’s blood coursing over his hand, as if there isn’t a blade embedded in his shoulder. “I think I forgot that rule. Apologies, my prince.”

He pushes the blade in a little further, wrings a choked gasp from Dean’s mouth as the prince’s eyes begin to cloud over. Dean’s free hand shakes, but he manages to lift it, reaching back for Castiel. His fingers brush the side of the angel’s face, skim over his hair- and then Dean’s breath rattles in his chest, and his pulse skips once, twice under Castiel’s fingers, before it stops.

The angel sighs as he feels it, eyes slipping closed for a moment. There is something… almost sacred, about feeling the last flutters of life escape the human’s body. It makes his heart jump, makes something twist in his chest and stomach. It’s an unfamiliar sensation, strange and new and more than a little addictive, something he’s begun to crave. One day, he’s determined, he’ll find out what the emotion’s called.

(It will be a long time before he discovers that it’s the emotions humans call fear.)

With a sigh, though, Castiel unwraps his fingers from around Dean’s throat, and tilts his blade down so the human’s body slides off it, crumpling to the ground in a heap. He lays his sword down on the ground next to the human, pulling the blade out of his shoulder and placing them carefully side by side. The wound heals the moment the sword is gone, muscle and flesh knitting back together, chipped bone sealing itself, sink smoothing over the top of it all.

Which leaves only the swords, and the body. Castiel cleans the swords off first, picking his up first and running his palm an inch above the blade, down the entire length, before flipping it over and repeating the action. When he lays it down, the blood is gone

Dean is motionless, eyes as wide and betrayed as they had been in his last few seconds of life. Castiel peers at them for a second, and then counts the freckles on Dean’s cheeks and nose, before reaching down to dip his fingers in the blood coagulating around the hole in Dean’s chest. It’s cold and almost slimy, the colour so dark it’s near to black, and Castiel grins as he dabs a little of it on Dean’s nose before sealing up the wound – it will be fun to see how long the prince takes to notice it.

Despite the healed wound, Dean still doesn’t awake. Castiel sighs; sometimes, it is almost as if Dean doesn’t  _want_ to come back, the trouble he makes Castiel go to bringing him back. Settling down on the floor, cross-legged, he pulls Dean’s head onto his lap and closes his eyes, splaying hands over the human’s temples. His eyes glow white, seeping through under his eyelashes and turning his eyelids red.

“Wake up, dear prince,” he murmurs when he is done, and Dean jerks to life with a gasp so desperate, he might have been dying all over again.


End file.
